In a recent article published by The Epoch Times, Jeffrey A. Tucker founder of the Brownstone Institute wrote an article examining the BLS’ glowing September 2024 Unemployment report. According to the BLS Unemployment fell significantly in September and the media rejoiced in this report without delving into the actual details.
But as Jeffrey dug deeper, he found some strange anomalies. As we do, he examined both the establishment payroll numbers and compared them to the Household Survey numbers. But Jeffrey also looked at the types of jobs, part-time or full-time, foreign-born or U.S. born, and government vs. private sector jobs.
Here are some of his surprising findings:
- Nearly half of the new jobs were part-time jobs- New part-time jobs are not the basis for a healthy economy. According to David Stockman, “work-from-home has made it very easy for freelancers… to attach themselves to two, three or even four employer payrolls. These all count as “jobs” in the establishment survey, but not in the household survey.”
- A lot of the new jobs were for the government- we mentioned this last month. Government jobs do not increase productivity (although for some strange reason economists count them in GDP as if somehow shuffling papers and increasing regulation makes a country richer). If the 785,000 new government jobs were excluded, unemployment didn’t fall as reported but instead unemployment rose. (Editor’s note: How many HR people does it take to hire 785,000 people in one month?)
- The majority of non-governmental new jobs went to foreign-born workers and actually native-born Americans lost half a million jobs while foreign-born workers gained 1.4 million jobs.
- He also found a strange correlation between the Establishment and Household numbers (as if they had both been massaged a bit).
You can read the full article HERE.
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